Electricity (2005)

Directed by: Rob Bowman | 96 minutes | action, thriller, adventure, fantasy, crime | Actors: Jennifer Garner, Goran Visnjic, Kirsten Prout, Will Yn Lee, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Terence Stamp, Natassia Malthe, Bob Sapp, Chris Ackerman, Edson T. Ribeiro, Colin Cunningham, Hiro Kanagawa, Mark Houghton, Laura Ward, Kurt Max Runte, Nathaniel Arcand, Aaron Au, Kevan Ohtsji, Ian Tracey, Jana Mitsoula, Sean Akira, Taku Kawai, Kendall Cross, Ty Olsson, Nancy Wetzel, Paul Wu, Marke Driesschen, Jason Isaacs

In ‘Daredevil’, Elektra Natchios was especially in love with Matt Murdock (aka Daredevil) and wanted nothing more than to kill Daredevil (aka Matt Murdock), because she – wrongly – believed he was responsible for her father’s death. In this film she dies after a confrontation with Colin ‘Bullseye’ Farrell, but fortunately this is a comic book adaptation and it is no problem to bring the dead back to life. In this spin-off, she’s alive and kicking again, thanks to the magic of the blind martial arts master Stick (Terence Stamp). Strange that she doesn’t visit her old love, but that aside.

She is trained by Stick, but as soon as she proves to be too violent, he sends her away. As you would expect in a superhero (inn) movie, the main character is a hero who uses his or her powers to help the underdog, but that’s not Elektra’s calling. She becomes a hit man à la Nikita and is very good at her job. She can move at the speed of light and can see into the future. With her sai daggers (which she also used in ‘Daredevil’) she takes many people to the afterlife.

After her latest cold-blooded murder, she wants a break, but her agent (yes, hitmen have agents too!) comes up with a job that’s too good to be true. She gets two million dollars for her next murder. Her client wants her to be at the location a few days in advance, a beautiful bungalow on the water. Because it takes her a while to learn who to kill, she has plenty of time to indulge in her obsessions, nightmares and flashbacks to the time of her mother’s murder. She also meets her neighbors, the beautiful three-day-old stubble Mark Miller (Goran Visnjic), and his teenage daughter Abby (Kirsten Prout). It should come as no surprise that they are the very ones on the hit list.

Elektra turns out not to be as destructive as first suggested, but decides to spare the lives of the two. With this she gets involved in a battle between Good and Evil, Evil in this case is a group called The Hand. The Hand consists of a visually interesting bunch of Japanese bad guys, who are looking for the ‘Treasure’. Members of The Hand seem to have walked straight out of X-Men, but a moan who cares. The best one is Tattoo, the special effects are great, because his tattoos come to life. Truly breathtaking. Speaking of breath, the Angelina Jolie look-a-like Typhoid’s is deadly and the (not fatal) kiss she gives to Elektra has since been nominated for Best Picture Kiss by MTV in 2005.

There follow a number of mainly colorful action scenes, of which you can already predict the outcome and a special passage with white sheets, where it is not clear whether Elektra is now fighting with the sheets or with her enemy Kirigi.

All in all, ‘Elektra’ has become quite an entertaining film, although a lot is missing. The various mutual relationships, Stick-Elektra, Mark-Elektra, Abby-Elektra, are not worked out. How did she get her obsessive-compulsive disorder? What was her relationship with her father, apart from the fact that he apparently forced her to tread water for a long time. The purpose of The Hand is not explained further. Who are they, what do they want with the Treasure? You may have to read the comics to know this, but if you’ve only seen the movie, you’ll miss that knowledge and that’s a shame.